CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
IWAKE AT THE FIRST light breaking over the horizon, my grandfather’s sun cresting.
‘Ariadne?’ Dionysus whispers sleepily beside me. I startle, alarmed to find him so close though I know we slept side by side. At some point, we must have migrated from the furthest edges of the tent to somewhere near the centre. Still not touching, still a certain width between us.
But still …
‘Where … going?’ His words are muffled by the pillow he is half buried in.
‘I thought I’d take a turn about the deck. I’ll see you later.’
‘Wait … sorry … you … you friend.’
‘Oh, for the mercy of Zeus, can you at least wake up and apologize to me properly if that’s what you mean to do?’
He rolls over, his curls falling messily into his face, and I have to resist the urge to push them back. I know I said friends rather than lovers but aren’t we missing an incredibly enticing third option here?
We are already kissing in public; we could be friends who do such things in private too. Isn’t his whole following about defining your relationships in a way that works for you? Well, I could certainly define a sort of friendship that involved … pleasure.
You are mine. You will always be mine.
I wince, memories surfacing that I thought I’d crushed into fuel, something to feed the fires that keep pushing me onwards.
So, maybe not. Maybe I’m not capable of touching anyone ever again without wondering what they truly mean. What purpose it really serves …
Dionysus pushes himself up in one sudden, feline stretch.
‘Ariadne, I’m very sorry about yesterday.
I was scared and shaken and I blamed myself for Hera getting to you.
I got it into my head that if you disliked me it might keep you safe, which I appreciate now was a wholly impossible thing to ask of you, owing to my rugged good looks and irresistible wit, but –’
I throw my pillow at him, and it knocks him down, back into his.
‘I didn’t even get to my gracious humility.’
‘I will smother you.’
‘Promises, promises, dear wife.’
‘Do you always flirt with women midway through making it clear you’re just friends?’
‘Aha!’ He sits back up. ‘You admit we are friends and I will take it, then, that my apology is accepted.’
‘If it allows me to leave this tent in peace, then fine, we’re friends.’
He takes a breath and, in that flickering moment, I see a touch of relief.
My stomach knots – did he really think I might refuse? I’m off to confront a man who declared my death to be of no consequence and a man who abandoned me to its certainty – I’m not going to turn down an ally just because he keeps irksomely insisting I’m going to fall in love with him.
‘Wonderful. We’re both too damaged for a relationship – look at us being self-aware.’ He stretches his arms above his head. ‘Let’s find breakfast. I’m starving and in need of soup.’
‘Soup? The sun’s not even risen.’
‘Have you never felt a sudden lust for soup? I have certain riddling soup-related theories –’
I clap my hand over his mouth. ‘You are not adding soup to your iconography. Now, let’s go find you some if it keeps you quiet.’
I wait until he is nearly finished with the broth, both of us perched at the bow of the ship, watching the dolphins haul us along.
I poke at my own bowl – half disbelieving that he managed to encourage me into sampling breakfast soup and half reluctant to admit he was correct about it.
‘How are your powers?’ I ask. ‘Do you have any energy to spare?’
‘Well, I’m not sure it was worth all you went through for it, but, yes, the plan seems to be working. I can feel more power trickling in every moment that the tale of our marriage spreads. So what did you have in mind?’
‘Can you curse me?’
‘I do, several times a day. Would you care to be more specific?’
‘Like Hera did.’
He stares at me, lips thinning into a pale line. ‘Excuse me?’
‘If we think I have some sort of power, I’d rather experiment with someone I trust rather than wait for the next god to strike me down.’
Dionysus climbs to his feet, urgent and fevered. ‘No more gods are going to be striking you down!’
‘I’d prefer not to take that risk.’
‘It’s not a risk. It never would have happened in the first place if I’d just thought for two fucking seconds about why Artemis would suddenly appear at our wedding – what, like she’d care so much about our shorn hair?’
‘That was not your fault.’
‘Yes, it was! I can’t lead a group and then put them all in danger like that! No one is going to curse you again! I promise.’
‘False.’
We turn – no creaking floorboards to warn of his approach because he flutters above the deck, winged sandals hovering. Just as I’m about to comment on their apparent recalibration, they suddenly halt and Hermes falls to the floor, skimming his knee across the boards and scrambling to his feet.
‘If you don’t curse her, I will,’ he says smoothly, like his landing was utterly seamless.
Dionysus jolts forward, jaw tense as he glowers at his brother.
Hermes glares right back. ‘It’s an excellent idea.
I don’t know if it’s bravado or wishful thinking but there are plenty of gods who might want to punish your new wife.
She’s going up against Theseus, which won’t please Poseidon.
Hera’s bound to discover her curse didn’t work, and then what – she’ll send a monster if you’re lucky and if you’re not she’ll shift the curse in a way that gets past whatever discrepancy is at play here.
And that’s not mentioning the fact that if Ariadne does have some sort of power, that would be awfully convenient against Theseus, Perseus and who knows what other upstart bastards covet your place on Olympus.
Don’t be an idiot. If you love her, help her. ’
Dionysus glances between us both, as though searching for a way out. Finally his eyes land on me.
‘Please don’t make me hurt you.’
I turn to Hermes, who shrugs. ‘My offer stands.’
‘Alright,’ I say, pushing my shoulders back and trying to pretend this doesn’t terrify me. ‘How would you like to torment me first?’
I’d spent a week on Theseus’s ship and only made it halfway to Athens before we wound up on Naxos. This is, Dionysus insists, because Theseus is an appalling sailor who relies too much on his father’s affiliation with the sea and doesn’t know how to actually hoist a sail.
He says all this while waving his dolphins on, not a sail in sight.
At any rate, he expects we’ll arrive tonight. Which gives us a full day with little else to do but experiment.
We set up at the bow, Hermes circling me, waving his hands as though warming up his powers, and Myrto sitting on the floor with a wax tablet clutched in her hand to document our findings.
Dionysus grips the rail at the edge of the ship, watching us with an already displeased scowl though we haven’t even begun.
At once, Hermes shoots his hands out and whispers something I don’t catch.
My hands itch. Is that it? Or am I just imagining some effect?
‘Well? Did it work?’ I ask.
Hermes frowns, tilting his head this way and that. ‘Touch something.’
How ominous. I look around for something unimportant, just in case my touch turns it to stone or sets it on fire. I settle on the spoon resting in my empty soup bowl.
It blazes hot beneath my touch. I flinch back, watching as the molten heat solidifies into smooth, shining metal. Gold.
Myrto scribbles so hurriedly on her tablet she scratches the wood beneath the wax.
‘One of your curses, I believe,’ Hermes says.
Dionysus narrows his eyes. ‘Hilarious.’
‘This doesn’t feel like much of a curse,’ I say, looking to my own fingers like I might see them glowing.
‘Just wait,’ Dionysus says darkly.
I see what he means a moment later, when I brush the rope tie of my own chiton and the fabric heats and hardens under my touch.
‘Very well, I understand the curse,’ I say. I can breathe, just about, but I keep my hands out before me, scared of touching the whole dress and encasing myself in a golden statue I can’t escape from. ‘Can you remove the curse, please? Clearly I’m not immune to this one.’
‘Wait.’ Dionysus leaps up. ‘Let me get my pine cones.’
I swear after him, but he’s already running.
I adjust the golden belt as Dionysus, finally seeing the benefits of our experiments, leans against a mast, twirling his newly golden pine cone staff that he’s elected to call a thyrsus.
It doesn’t look quite so ridiculous now it is solid gold.
When he starts cackling, I narrow my eyes at Hermes, who casts his gaze to the sky to keep from laughing too. Myrto snorts as she makes what is clearly a big cross on the tablet.
‘What?’ I demand, sniffing. No, not sniffing – twitching. My nose shudders and, slightly wary of turning myself to gold, I bring my hand up to find a smooth, flat button where my nose was.
I run to the golden staff, angling it until a tooth of a pine cone is flat enough for a reflection.
Dionysus is too busy laughing to stop me.
‘Do I have a rabbit nose?’
‘A hare, actually,’ Hermes corrects. ‘I thought I’d do ears of a donkey but that’s sort of Dionysus’s thing.’
‘Alright, change it back. I’m clearly not immune to this one either.’
Dionysus starts laughing again. ‘Your nose twitches when you speak.’
‘Hermes!’ I whirl on the other god.
He, at least, lazily waves his hand and I feel my nose sharpen into its usual upturned point.
‘Clearly this isn’t working,’ I say, beginning to pace. Ahead, maenads and satyrs mill around the back of the boat, watching without trying to appear like they are watching, and I really did not need an audience for my repeated failures. ‘Maybe I did something inadvertently when Hera cursed me.’
I try to cast my mind back, remembering only the terror.
Could it be that? Something to do with adrenaline racing through my veins, waking dormant powers?
Or the way I’d clutched that aulos, desperately calling for help.
Was it my own fierce commitment to survival that allowed me to circumvent the curse?
I tell myself that it will work this time. That I refuse to fail before all these people. That whatever lies within me will prove itself.